Likening Kids to Pickle Jars
by EGB Fan
Summary: Kylie's family problems increase, she and Eduardo have an annoying child psychologist on their backs and there's a supernatural subplot for good measure.


**Disclaimer:** John and Eden Spengler created by Fritz Baugh. All other original characters created by me. The rest of this stuff I do not own. Hope that clears things up for you. Here, if you do want to read it, is the story:

_Extreme Ghostbusters: _**Likening Kids to Pickle Jars**

Joey Jackson was being cross-examined by his school principal. It was early morning and he was missing a lacrosse game for this. Why couldn't he witness scraps between the preschool kids before a geography lesson or a pop quiz or something? He sighed impatiently but quietly as Principal Hudson asked him again if he was quite sure of what he saw.

"Yes," Joey said evenly, forcing his patience as this had to be the third time he'd been asked if he was _absolutely sure_. "I promise you, she was just digging in the sandbox with a couple of other kids and he just marched over and punched her in the face."

Principal Hudson was still looking very dubious. Joey knew why he was reluctant to believe his story: the little girl who had been wrongly punched in the face was Conchita Rivera, and Joey's oldest brother was good friends with her parents, so this account could be saturated with bias. Well, maybe Joey was a little biased, but it was all quite true. He had seen it quite plainly whilst carrying a new shipment of crayons over to the preschool building as a favour to the teachers. He had thought Hudson might be a little more believing than this. Conchita was a famously well-behaved child, and she would never do anything to make another kid actually want to _hit _her.

Joey was just eleven, tall for his age and on the lighter side of black with close-cut short hair. He was wearing combat trousers and a baggy t-shirt that had belonged probably to more than one of his four older brothers in the past, and perhaps to either or both of his sisters as well. As Hudson scrutinised him carefully, Joey stuffed his hands into his pockets and wondered why he was going to so much trouble for an almost-four year old he hardly knew. He supposed he must be doing it for his brother, who was very fond of Conchita, but also he knew that she was one of only a handful of children that would never deserve a punch in the face. And he had been witness to the event. It was only right that he should step forward.

The phone on the principal's desk rang shrilly: a single long sound that meant it must be coming from inside the school. Joey happened to know that outside calls announced themselves with two short rings in quick succession. Hudson picked up the phone and barked officiously, "Yes?" Joey was aware of a small murmur as the secretary said her piece, after which Hudson nodded and said, "Send them in."

"Are the parents here?" asked Joey.

"Yes, Joseph," Hudson replied shortly. "Well, I don't think we'll be needing you for this. If you're absolutely sure of what you saw…?"

"I'm sure," Joey was adamant.

"Very well, Joseph. You may go."

Joey retreated out into the corridor, where he soon came across Conchita's parents: Kylie Griffin and Eduardo Rivera. They both looked absolutely incensed, but both of their expressions changed to sheer surprise when they saw Joey approaching them from the principal's office.

"Hi," Kylie greeted him politely.

"Hi," Joey smiled half-heartedly. "Listen, that was about Conchita. I'm her witness. Have you seen her?"

"Yeah," Kylie answered grimly. "She's got a black eye."

"That little bastard!" Joey exclaimed indignantly. "Well, you must have heard about Stephan Landers. That kid oughtta be strangled if you ask me. But I should probably warn you that Hudson didn't wanna believe me that Conchita was totally blameless. I think it's because of Stephan's mother. I've heard she can be… difficult."

"We've met her," Eduardo said dryly. "She seemed kinda crazy to me."

"Well, good luck," Joey smiled encouragingly. "I'd better go."

"Ok then," said Kylie. "Hey… thanks."

Neither she nor Eduardo would have expected this act of kindness from Joey Jackson, who tended to treat almost every situation with total nonchalance, but they had heard from his brother Roland that he could be surprising like that sometimes.

"Stephan's mother has just taken him home," Hudson said evenly to Eduardo and Kylie. "I should warn you that she… um… was rather upset that all the blame was being placed upon Stephan. We may have to investigate this matter further."

"What's to investigate?" demanded Kylie. "He punched our daughter in the face!"

"Yes, Miss Griffin, I know," Hudson said soothingly. "And we do have witnesses who say it was an unprovoked attack. I assure you that Conchita will suffer no more distress if we can help it."

"So what are you gonna do about the kid that hit her?" asked Eduardo.

"Well, children of elementary school age would be suspended for something like this," Hudson told him. "But we try not to suspend the preschool children, if only because they wouldn't understand and it wouldn't be much of a punishment for them. Stephan's mother has made an appointment to see me this afternoon. We'll decide what to do with him depending on the outcome of the meeting."

Neither Kylie nor Eduardo felt satisfied with this answer, but they both held their tongues. They tried so hard to get along with the school staff if only for Conchita's sake. From what they had heard, school life tended to be easier for the children whose parents weren't detested by the staff. Besides which these people were just trying to do their jobs. Kylie privately decided that if she found out Stephan Landers wasn't properly punished, then she would make a fuss. But in the meantime it would be best just to wait and see what happened.

x x x

Kylie's father Steve Griffin had just arrived in town for a long weekend. He'd called the firehouse moments after Eduardo and Kylie left, and had been told a basic version of recent events: they had been called to a not-too-serious emergency at Conchita's school with no idea how long it would take. So Steve had resolved not to worry and taken the opportunity to wander round a shopping mall in search of the ideal birthday present for his older granddaughter. He felt bad that he would be away on the actual date, just as he had missed his younger grandchild's first birthday back in February. But despite the fact that nobody in that family was materialistic, he thought that a good present would go some way to making up for his absence.

Steve was outside a Starbucks when he ran into his ex-wife Jill. He practically jumped out of his skin when he saw her, and even had a minor panic attack when he realised for sure that it definitely _was_ her and not the sister she so resembled.

"Steve!" Jill Griffin exclaimed delightedly. "I didn't expect to see you here. Ooh, careful – don't have another heart attack."

"What are you doing here?" Steve asked guardedly.

"I've been hanging around since Christmas," Jill told him, with a slight edge to her voice. "Didn't Kylie tell you?"

"I knew you were here at Christmas, but we all thought you would have moved on by now."

"Well… I've been around, but I thought it best to keep my distance for a while."

They were silent for a moment, sheer unadulterated awkwardness filling the air between them. It was shortly before Christmas that Jill proposed getting back together with her ex-husband, though not because she still loved him or anything like that: they both knew it was just an unlikely plan to help her work her way back into her daughter's life. Jill had walked out when Kylie was six, twenty years ago almost to the day, but had only recently started to regret it. And after twenty years of getting over her mother's disappearance from her life, Kylie just wasn't interested.

"Wanna get a coffee?" asked Jill, tilting her head towards the Starbucks.

"I've been trying to cut back," Steve told her.

"Afraid we'll be spotted?"

"Well… kinda. But I really _am_ trying to cut back."

"Ok," shrugged Jill, "so let's go to my apartment."

"I don't think so," Steve said hastily. "It'd be far worse if someone saw me actually going home with you. On second thought let's get a coffee in here. I could use it."

They drank slowly and chatted easily for half an hour or so. They were both surprised at how easy it was to regress back to the days before they were married, when they could smile and talk and actually enjoy each other's company. It was nice for them to be able to throw a name randomly into the conversation, or remember something of small significance from thirty-odd years ago, and have the other one know instantly what they were talking about. Steve even started to remember why he'd once thought it a good idea to marry this woman.

"So you've been to that store that sells kiddies' fashion accessories in various shades of pink," Jill remarked, glancing down to the floor at Steve's shopping bag. "Conchita's birthday, right?"

"You remember?" Steve asked, surprised.

"I knew it was this sort of time of year because it was around when Kylie graduated. I don't remember the exact date, though… no, don't tell me," Jill snapped, when Steve started to open his mouth. "I know this one… May twenty-first, right?"

"You _have_ been doing your homework."

"I could at least make the effort. Come on Steve, tell me about them. Please?"

"Kylie would go mad," Steve protested, his gaze dropping from the angelic big green eyes that he had fallen for all those years ago.

"So I'll guess and you can just nod or shake your head," Jill suggested, half-seriously. "Is Conchita a girly girl, then? Into pink hair slides and that?"

Steve nodded slowly, and then after some thought he added, "She's a pretty bizarre dresser if you wanna know the truth."

"Like Kylie?"

"It's a very different kind of bizarre: _much_ more colourful."

"I noticed Conchita has the Davies look," Jill went on, Davies being her maiden name, and the various members of her family all looking astonishingly similar. "What about Rose? I've never really seen her. Who does _she _look like?"

"Jill, please… I'm not allowed to tell you any of this stuff."

"Well… can I see a picture, then?"

Steve looked at her again, obviously wrestling with his conscience.

"You must have one – you were always into pictures," Jill persisted. "Please?"

"All right." Steve reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, rifling through its contents until he came to a particular photograph, which he then handed to Jill.

"Aww – they're so pretty!" she exclaimed, gazing at the picture with what looked like genuine fondness.

It was a small photograph, and the two little girls filled it almost entirely. The older child, Conchita, was smiling sweetly with dimples, big green eyes and a cute little upturned nose – all inherited from Kylie and her mother. She had long brown hair tied up in bunches with colourful beaded bands, and her tanned arms were wrapped affectionately around her younger sister's shoulders. Fourteen-month-old Rose looked a lot less happy about being photographed. (The picture was a month old – Steve planned to get a more recent one from Kylie when he saw her.) She had narrow features and a straight nose that Jill recognised from Kylie's boyfriend… she could not _believe_ that she'd forgotten his name! It was something typically Hispanic… anyway, the younger sister resembled him, with wide dark eyes whose size was a mark of Davies women. The baby had a short crop of downy black hair: the only piece of evidence to suggest that Steve Griffin had played any part in creating these two children.

"They're beautiful," agreed Steve. "I shouldn't say this but… they're definitely your granddaughters."

Jill cocked an eyebrow, her face betraying nothing.

"Chita's very brainy and we think Rose is too," Steve elaborated. "And they're feisty – they don't take anybody's shit – and they're very… individual. They get a lot of that from Kylie."

"And she gets it from me?"

"Well she doesn't get it from me."

"Sure you don't want to get back together?"

"Quite sure, thank you."

"You called her Chita," observed Jill. "Is that what they call her at home?"

"Yeah, most of the time," answered Steve.

"Funny sort of name," Jill went on. "Yeah, I know, it's Spanish. I mean they obviously took turns to pick, didn't they – although I expect Kylie was only too happy to give her a…" – she considered – "an _unusual _name. So what about Rose? Does she have any pet names?"

"I can't tell you that," Steve sighed wearily.

"Why the hell not?"

"Because Kylie doesn't want me to."

"Ok, ok," sighed Jill. "I suppose I've got enough out of you for the time being. Can I keep this?" she requested, indicating the photograph. "If Kylie finds out I have it I'll say you dropped it at the subway while I was stalking you, ok?"

"All right," Steve relented, without much persuasion. He was very aware that he had loved her once, and he couldn't help feeling sorry for her. "I've got loads of pictures of them anyway. But I don't understand why it's taken you this long."

"Neither do I," Jill confessed. "Perhaps it's my… you know… _age_. It's getting to the stage where I soon won't be able to have any more children and…" she tailed off, not even sure of what she was trying to say.

"Jill…"

"Yeah?"

"Why _exactly_ did you leave us?"

"Well because we were all so miserable," Jill shrugged dismissively. "I would have thought that was obvious. But I'm not going to pretend I left just so that you and Kylie could be happy. It was killing me. I know it sounds terrible, but I just wasn't feeling it." She then started to slow like some kind of wind-up toy as she finished, "I don't think… I loved you… or even Kylie… quite as much… as… I should have."

Steve remembered the day Kylie was born. Jill had had a terrible time giving birth: blood, scalpels, more blood, painful incisions, intensely agonising contractions, a little more blood… and then when she finally held the smaller-than-average baby that had been so bafflingly reluctant to come out, she had seemed totally unmoved. Steve had been surprised at the time, his own joy at seeing his daughter for the first time being absolutely overwhelming. But then he hadn't been the one to go through all that pain, and all that undignified poking and prodding. He'd managed to assure himself that his wife would come round eventually, but somehow he didn't think it would take her twenty-six years.

"Did you love her at all?" He just had to ask after wanting to know for years.

"I did actually," Jill sighed sadly. "But it was so small I hardly knew it was there. I just don't know anything anymore, Steve. I think there must be something wrong with me. Who else finds it that hard to love their children?"

Steve felt suddenly very moved. "How long have you cared?" he asked quietly.

"It's always bothered me a little bit. But I never really thought about it this much before."

"Do you know how much you hurt Kylie?"

"I was horrible to her. I honestly didn't think my leaving would bother her that much. She always preferred Rose to me anyway." Rose Lockyer was Steve's grandmother, and became Rose Rivera's namesake a little less than eight years after her death.

"You were her _mother_!" exclaimed Steve, stunned by this revelation.

"Yeah. I still am."

"Are you?"

"Well… technically. Doesn't that still mean something?"

"I don't think it means anything to Kylie." He glanced at his watch. This preschool emergency couldn't have taken more than an hour, surely. "I have to go. I haven't seen them yet."

"Thanks for the picture," Jill smiled weakly. "And for the info."

"Don't sweat it," Steve muttered, snatching up his shopping bag and making for the exit.

x x x

The next day was Saturday. Unusual thought it was, Joey Jackson actually made the effort to get out of bed and asked his brother Roland to take him to the firehouse. Roland was faintly surprised, and had difficulty getting Joey to divulge his reason for wanting to go. But he got it in the end, and was only too happy to take him.

"Hi Roland, hi Joey," Jessica Venkman greeted them down in the lobby. "What are you doing here, Joe?"

Joey looked sheepish and didn't say anything, so Roland answered for him: "He came to check on Conchita."

"Aww." Jessica wrinkled her nose and smiled only slightly mockingly. "That's sweet."

"Yeah, well," Joey mumbled awkwardly, as Roland made his way upstairs. "I missed a lacrosse game for her so I might as well know what's been happening."

"You missed a lacrosse game for her? Joey, you are such an angel."

"Shut up. What are _you_ doing here?"

"Just hanging out," shrugged Jessica. "My brother's got friends round. You should hear the noise they make just saying hello, never mind when they start band rehearsals. So don't you wanna know how she is?"

"Who?" asked Joey.

"Conchita Rivera." Jessica for some reason enjoyed saying the full exotic sounding name out loud. "She and Rose are out with Kylie's dad, but they've filled us in. She still has a black eye, obviously, but apparently she seems happy enough now."

"That's good. She was very upset yesterday when it happened."

"I'll bet she was. Nobody likes being punched in the face, never mind a pretty little girl."

Joey had only met Jessica a couple of times before, and again he was struck by her effortless ability to talk to anyone about anything. He was about to be further impressed, for at that moment in sauntered a pencil-thin woman with cropped blond hair dressed in an expensive looking tailored suit. Joey found the air of confidence that surrounded her slightly intimidating, but Jessica just switched on an enquiring smile ready to deal with this woman as though she did this every day.

"_Good_ morning!" the swish blonde exclaimed brightly.

Jessica just couldn't help herself. She switched on an exaggerated smile and mimicked the woman's tones with astounding accuracy: "_Good_ morning!"

"I'm Dr. Donna Shipp," the woman went on, thrusting an immaculately manicured hand towards Jessica. Jessica, clearly suppressing laughter, accepted the handshake with a smile of amusement. "Might I find a Mr. Rivera and Miss Griffin here?"

"You might, Dr. Shipp," Jessica returned airily. "May I enquire as to the purpose of your visit?"

After a moment's consideration, Dr. Donna Shipp seemed to realise that Jessica was in fact taking the piss. She snatched her hand back and eyed the girl disapprovingly, taking in the untidy dark hair and her brother's old jeans and t-shirt.

"Who are you?" Dr. Shipp asked curtly.

"Jessica Venkman – call me Jess," Jessica replied mockingly. "My father is a founding member of this establishment."

"Is he, dear? How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"She's twelve," Joey cut in, feeling that this woman commanded respect.

"Yes, he's right, I am," Jessica solemnly agreed. "I was just kidding."

"I see. Very amusing," Dr. Shipp returned curtly. "Well, now that's out of the way, may I see Mr. Rivera and/or Miss Griffin?"

"Probably," Jessica smiled politely. "But I still want you to tell me what it's about. You could be anyone."

"I most certainly am _not_ 'anyone'." She sounded very offended. "I am a doctor – a psychiatrist, to be precise – and I am here regarding the Stephan Landers incident."

Jessica's eyebrows shot skyward. "Are you?" she asked. "Who got a psychiatrist involved?"

"I don't think that's any of your business, Miss Venkman."

"Joseph here was witness to the event in question," Jessica went on, still mimicking Dr. Shipp's pompous tones. "He thinks that Stephan's crazy."

"Does he?" Dr. Shipp turned her head sharply to face Joey and gave him the same scrutinising look that she had given Jessica. "Well, I think _I'll _be the one to decide that."

This somewhat purposeless exchange was then interrupted by the arrival of two children of about six: a blond girl, who was carrying a few bits of colourful plastic-coated wire, and a redheaded boy who had an adult-sized tweed jacket slung over one arm. Dr. Shipp took a few moments to stare at the pair, watching with baffled interest as the boy laid the jacket neatly out on the floor and the girl set to work with her bits of wire.

"What is it this time?" Jessica asked them guardedly, not bothering with any form of hello. "Or are you just knocking up a home-made birthday present?"

"She'd like some of these," Eden Spengler remarked, idly flicking a forefinger at the red, purple and pink wires in her collection. "The jacket isn't quite her size _or_ her taste, though. Um… no, it's an experiment."

"Should we take cover?" asked Jessica, entirely serious.

"I don't think so," replied Eden. "Your father's upstairs and he and Mother have just been watching _Knight Rider_, and in it some of the characters had been imprisoned by – I don't know – members of some malevolent illegal organisation. And in order to escape these people made a bomb out of a tweed jacket. But I don't believe for a _moment_ that it can be done," she finished emphatically.

"_I _think it can," her twin brother John argued, "if you consider the static electricity in this thing. It might only be a small explosion, though," he added, somewhat sadly.

"Well there's only one way to find out," Jessica smiled indulgently. "This is Dr. Shipp, by the way," and she tilted her heard towards the good doctor, now gaping like a goldfish at the twins. "She's a psychiatrist."

"Oh, I see," said Eden, with a slight smirk.

At that point Dr. Shipp suddenly returned to her senses and asked Joey sharply, "Is this the child?" nodding towards Eden as she said it.

"Um…" Joey was stumped by the question. Finally he gave the best answer he could: "Well she's _a_ child."

Dr. Shipp rolled her eyes and said impatiently, "Is she the child involved in the Stephan Landers incident?"

"No she isn't," John suddenly cut in. "The child involved in the Stephan Landers incident isn't here right now_ and_ she has a name."

"Perhaps Dr. Shipp doesn't know how to pronounce her name," Eden suggested helpfully. "You know how these things are – she's probably only ever seen it written down."

"That's a very good point, Eden," Jessica nodded solemnly. "Her name is Conchita, Dr. Shipp. That's Con-sheeeeeeee-taaaaa," she repeated slowly, addressing the doctor as though she had acquired her PhD by some other means than intelligence. "It's Spanish. Some people don't like it as a name but I think it's kinda pretty. What do _you_ think, Dr. Shipp?"

Both of the twins smiled quietly to themselves.

"I think it's a perfectly fine name," Dr. Shipp smiled stiffly. "Where are her parents?"

"They're just upstairs," Eden told her, taking her eyes off the jacket-bomb to answer.

"Eden!" John objected. "Can you hurry up?"

"Are they _really_ making a bomb?" Dr. Shipp asked Jessica.

"They're really _trying_ to make a bomb," Jessica told her calmly. "But as Eden has already explained, they don't know yet whether that jacket is in fact an explosive device."

"I wouldn't worry," Eden advised. "Even if there _is_ an explosion – which I doubt – I shouldn't think it'll be enough to do any real harm."

"It's an ambiguous term, isn't it: 'any real harm'," Jessica smiled dryly. "But I think we'll be safe enough upstairs, Dr. Shipp. You can meet my dad while we're up there," and she started to lead the way upstairs. "He's a psychologist so you'll have something to talk about."

"Something to _argue_ about," Eden murmured quietly, while she continued to assemble the maybe-bomb.

"Are you at all into _Knight Rider_, Dr. Shipp?" Jessica enquired politely, as she marched easily up the stairs in her baggy faded jeans, Dr. Shipp struggling behind in her skin-tight pencil skirt.

Joey made to follow them, but then a thought occurred to him so he hung back and asked the twins, "Whose jacket is that?"

"I think it belongs to Dr. Stantz," Eden replied calmly. "He won't mind us borrowing it; I feel quite sure that it _isn't_ going to explode."

"Hey Edie," ventured John. "If there isn't an explosion, can we make a bomb out of something else?"

x x x

While Dr. Shipp was trying to get her head around the strange collection of minors downstairs, the very people she wanted to see had been directly above her head, discussing plans for their older daughter's birthday. Kylie and Eduardo were in the kitchen with Garrett Miller, the latter examining an unfamiliar symbol moulded in pewter and mounted on a leather cord.

"It's an Ancient Japanese symbol for protection," Kylie was explaining. "I went out and bought it in between cheering her up after she got beaten up yesterday. I never thought she'd be in any danger at school, but I guess you just never know."

Roland Jackson wandered in at that point, just as Garrett was saying, "I don't think this would have stopped him from hitting her. He's obviously just a little shit – not the kind of person to be put off by Japanese symbols."

"Well I believe this kind of stuff helps," retorted Kylie, sounding just a little offended as she snatched back the pendant. "It's gotta be worth a try at any rate."

It was at this point that the argument started in the next room: "Of _course_ you can't make a bomb out of a jacket." "Yah-hah! They must have done their research before they put it in the show!"

"Is that a birthday present for Conchita?" Roland asked Kylie.

She nodded.

"Well she'll like it for the way it looks anyway," Roland went on, with an encouraging smile. "Does she believe in all that kind of stuff?"

Kylie's gifts to her daughters were often spiritual like this one: they each had a dream catcher and other sleep-related items as their mother was anxious to protect them from nightmares; and there were various artefacts from various parts of the world meaning love, protection, prosperity, courage, strength or whatever dotted around the apartment. Roland was right: Conchita liked all of that stuff for the way it looked, particularly items from the more colourful cultures. Kylie was always sure to explain to her exactly what these things meant, stressing that it was all belief rather than fact, as she felt it was so important to let children make up their own minds.

"I don't know," she said, in answer to Roland's question. "She hasn't said she doesn't. I think maybe she's still a little too young to really think about it."

"So where and when is the party?" Garrett suddenly asked.

"We're having one for all of her little preschool buddies on the Friday afternoon," Eduardo told him. "We'll come here and do cake with you guys on the Saturday."

The Saturday – then a week away – was Conchita's fourth birthday. Her parents had a lot of things planned for her that day: presents, family, the small gathering at the firehouse, cake that wouldn't be taken away one small piece at a time by ice-cream-filled three and four year olds clutching balloons. Kylie and Eduardo were grateful that both Eduardo's sister-in-law Beth and Roland had volunteered to help them supervise the children's party. They liked Conchita's friends well enough, but they were among the many people that found toddlers difficult to cope with _en masse_.

_Knight Rider_ stopped wafting in from the next room and was replaced with live conversation. They could hear Jessica's voice, loud and insincerely chirpy: "This is my dad, _Doctor_ Venkman. Dad, this is Dr. Shipp. She's a psychiatrist."

"Really?" asked Peter, obviously trying not to laugh for some reason.

"Hold on, I'll find them," Jessica then said, and a moment later she was standing in the kitchen doorway. "Hey," she smiled pleasantly. "There's a psychiatrist here about the kid who punched Conchita."

All four of them instantly looked alarmed.

"I wouldn't worry about it," Jessica advised casually. "She's only a doctor – I mean what does _she_ know?"

"You're in a building full of doctors," pointed out Roland, who had completed his own doctorate in electrical engineering about a year ago.

"It's just a piece of paper," shrugged Jessica. "It doesn't give you all the answers, and Dad will back me up on that. And anyway, this one's a stuck-up know-it-all glamour-puss, so whatever she has to say will probably be a pile of crap anyway. That's groovy," she suddenly remarked, catching sight of the arcane symbol in Kylie's hand. "For your trendy daughter, I presume?"

"Yes," Kylie confirmed.

"Did Roland tell you that Joey came to check on her?"

"No." Kylie looked quizzically at Roland. "That was sweet of him."

"Yeah, Joey's been surprising us a lot lately," agreed Roland.

"So do we have to go and talk to this psychiatrist, then?" Eduardo asked warily.

"Well I would if I were you," Jessica smiled encouragingly. "It'll be interesting to hear what she's got to say – could be good for a laugh."

Eduardo and Kylie stood up and traipsed into the next room behind Jessica. Peter Venkman was there, looking just a little like he was trying not to laugh. Janine Spengler was on the sofa idly flicking through a TV guide, and Joey was hovering in the doorway.

They caught sight of Dr. Shipp at once, and were instantly met with a look of alarm and disapproval. Kylie got the brunt of it. She was suddenly very conscious of her black lipstick and eyeliner, and couldn't help switching on a facetious smile.

"Are you the parents?" Dr. Shipp asked sharply.

"Sure," Eduardo answered guardedly.

Dr. Shipp's glance darted over to him, and she started addressing him rather than Kylie: "I understand your daughter had a bit of a scrap with Stephan Landers yesterday. Is she all right now?"

"She has a black eye and she's still upset about it," Kylie replied, flinching slightly when Dr. Shipp's hawk-like gaze was suddenly concentrated back on her. "I wouldn't call it a 'scrap' exactly – it was very one-sided, from what I've heard."

Once again Joey Jackson was surprising. "It was," he cut in. "The little bastard just walked up to her and punched her."

"And she's _so_ pretty," added Jessica, shooting a look at Peter, whose shoulders were now shaking uncontrollably.

"Are you all right, Dr. Venkman?" Dr. Shipp asked disinterestedly.

"Fine," nodded Peter, trying _so_ hard not to laugh. "So what do you think, Dr. Shipp? Affectionless psychopath? I'd recommend a course of electric shock therapy if I were you."

Jessica raised a hand to her mouth and sniggered quietly into it.

"No!" exclaimed Dr. Shipp, absolutely horrified. "I think he may have a condition."

"A _condition_?" Kylie expostulated. "I'll tell you his condition: he's a little shit!"

"Miss Griffin, please," Dr. Shipp said soothingly. "I've come here today to try and explain this to you. We need to try and be _understanding_." She said this slowly and deliberately, as though she thought the word might be new to Kylie, like a particularly patronising person might explain something to a particularly small child.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Eduardo demanded angrily. "Yesterday we took our daughter home in tears after an unprovoked attack!"

"Sounds to me like he's anally retentive," volunteered Jessica, in tones of knowing solemnity. "Don't you think so, Dad?"

Peter suddenly had to disappear to the kitchen for a few moments. Jessica stayed where she was, her mouth twitching at the corners, until she could bear it no longer and had to leave too.

"There could be any number of explanations," Dr. Shipp went on calmly, addressing Eduardo and Kylie. "I am a physiological psychiatrist – I think it's something in his brain. I've talked to his parents and we've agreed to put him through a few tests – tomorrow morning, if we can. Then maybe I can come up with a diagnosis."

"So this diagnosis," Kylie said, in dangerously calm tones. "Will that make it ok for him to go around punching innocent little girls in the face?"

"Well no, of course not," Dr. Shipp back-pedalled hastily, switching on a disarming smile. "It will simply allow us to start helping him over it."

"Drugs!" Peter suddenly exclaimed, marching in from the kitchen. "These new labels you psychiatrists have made up just make my life _so_ much easier, Dr. Shipp. We've been waiting _years _for an excuse to pump kids with drugs – best way to shut them up if you ask me."

"There's a little more to it than that, Dr. Venkman," retorted Dr. Shipp.

"Whatever," shrugged Peter. "We coulda done with some of that for Jessie," and he tilted his head towards the kitchen. "She was a total nightmare – almost drove my wife crazy. You wouldn't believe the number of pick-me-ups I had to prescribe for her."

Dr. Shipp just stared at Peter, absolutely dumbfounded. He was doing a remarkable job of keeping a straight face now. Janine imagined he must have expelled all of that laughter in the kitchen, but apparently Jessica wasn't over her hysterics just yet.

"Is that all you came to tell us, Dr. Shipp?" Janine suddenly asked. "Because if so I think you'd better leave. We have work to do," she added, with an exaggerated smile.

"Well I'll be in touch," Dr. Shipp smiled politely, looking once again at Eduardo and Kylie, apparently oblivious to the daggers in their eyes. "Goodbye."

Nobody offered to see her out, so Dr. Shipp turned on her heel and marched towards the staircase with an air of dignity. Peter longed to see her struggle down the pole, but he couldn't think of any way to engineer such a situation at short notice.

Jessica then wandered in from the kitchen, Roland and Garrett behind her. She caught sight of Eduardo and Kylie's expressions – anger mixed with speechless amazement – and said dismissively to them, "Don't sweat it. Didn't I tell you it would all be a pile of crap?"

There suddenly came a small snapping sound from downstairs, followed by an undignified shriek. Jessica at once hurried over to the pole, squatted down and peered through the hole in the floor. She just caught sight of Dr. Shipp tottering speedily from the building on her impossible high heels, while John and Eden Spengler each hastily pulled off a shoe and beat out a small flame on the sleeve of their tweed jacket.

"So what was all that about?" asked Joey, looking expectantly from Peter to Jessica and back again.

"All what about, Joe?" Jessica asked innocently, rising to her full height.

"All that sniggering," Joey elaborated.

"Personal joke," shrugged Jessica. "Dad hates psychiatrists."

"I do not hate psychiatrists," argued Peter. "Psychiatrists hate _me_. It's because I'm a psychologist – psychiatrists can't stand us."

"What's the difference?" asked Garrett.

It was Jessica who answered: "Psychologists only study psychology, but psychiatrists do all the medical training first and then specialise."

"That's basically it," confirmed Peter, with a small shrug of indifference. "That's why the likes of Dr. Shipp think they know better than the likes of me."

"Doctors don't know shit," Jessica suddenly announced, her unorthodox language horrifying both of the Jacksons in the room. "That's what I like about you, Dad: you're quite happy to admit that you don't have all the answers."

Peter cocked an eyebrow. "Is that the _only_ thing you like about me?" he asked.

"Well, that and your money," Jessica smiled facetiously.

x x x

Eduardo and Kylie spent the rest of the day in a state of perpetual anger and indignation, which quickly spread to Roland, Garrett, Egon and Janine. Peter and Jessica were quite happy to laugh the whole thing off, but Kylie wondered just what else they were going to have to put up with from Dr. Shipp. As the damn woman had taken the time and effort to come and see them, Kylie could only assume that she anticipated their involvement in whatever was coming next. She later confided this thought to Eduardo as they approached their front door.

"Well we can only wait and see what happens," reasoned Eduardo. "What a bitch though, huh?"

Kylie unlocked the door and stepped into the apartment. It was a small place, and a quick look around told her that her father had yet to return with her children.

"Doesn't look like they're back yet," she said to Eduardo as he followed her in. "What time is it?"

"About four thirty. Steve did say he'd bring them back here, didn't he? They won't go to the firehouse?"

"Well that's what he told me."

As little as four years ago neither Eduardo nor Kylie would have envisaged themselves in a place that looked like theirs did now, but they found that they absolutely loved it there. It was just a little messy with the odd toy left on the floor, and the furniture had been scrounged from any available source so none of it matched. Eduardo and Kylie both liked that – it all made it easy to relax there, as there was no pressure on them to keep things tidy and in their place, which was great for the kids. There were a lot of framed photographs dotted around the apartment. That was Kylie's doing. As one might expect, a lot of these pictures were of Conchita and Rose, and occasionally some other close family members would crop up in them. There were also some old pictures of Rose Lockyer that Kylie insisted on putting on display. Eduardo professed not to be particularly into photographs, but he really didn't mind Kylie satisfying the whim. He only asked that she didn't display any pictures of his late father. It was great that she liked to use photographs as a way to keep the dead with her, but he'd just really rather not.

They slobbed out in front of the TV eating leftover chicken from the night before until Steve arrived back with the girls. He and Conchita each had a hand on Rose's folded-up pushchair, the baby slumped over her grandfather's shoulder half-asleep. She blinked sleepily and started to wake up a bit when Kylie took her into her own arms, looking faintly disgruntled when she realised she was home and didn't need to be woken at all.

"Are you tired, baby?" Kylie asked her smilingly.

"No," mumbled Rose, who was speaking very well for fifteen months.

"Shall we give you some dinner and then put you to bed?"

"No."

"Did you have a nice time with Grandpa?"

"No."

Smiling indulgently, Kylie handed Rose over to her father and took her turn hugging Conchita.

"_I_ had a good time," the older sister announced brightly. "And I think she did too."

"Though she'd never admit it," added Steve, hearing the relief in his own voice. He was so glad to have his granddaughters back home. All through the park, Pizza Hut and the zoo he had been terrified of running into Jill – and that was only after he got over the alarming idea that she might be following them, crouching behind the nearest bush and waiting for the right moment to snatch either or both of her estranged grandchildren.

"Are you ok?" Eduardo asked Steve, when Kylie was in the next room preparing a light snack for her daughters (they had both eaten well that day), Conchita with her. Rose was slowly but surely falling asleep on her father, a steady trickle of drool dribbling onto his shoulder. "Are you tired, Rosie?"

"No."

"Don't you wanna go to bed?"

"No."

"What about a bath?"

"No."

"Dinner?"

"'K," she finally relented, yawning widely.

"That's amazing," remarked Steve. "She has whole conversations with you."

"Yeah, well, she's my little genius," Eduardo smiled indulgently. "So are you ok?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," shrugged Steve. He really didn't want to tell Eduardo that he knew for a fact Jill was still hanging around, much less that he had seen her and even spent half an hour socialising with her. If Eduardo knew, it would get back to Kylie, and that would cause terrible problems that Steve couldn't even envisage.

After the kids were asleep, Kylie told her father about Dr. Shipp, which made both her and Eduardo feel angry all over again.

"Well honey, you don't care what she thinks, do you?" reasoned Steve.

"I suppose not," Kylie relented. "But I don't want that little bastard being let off what he did to Chita."

"Can they do that?" asked Steve.

"Probably," shrugged Kylie. "Donna Shipp has a tailored suit and a hundred-dollar manicure. Aren't women like that supposed to be able to do whatever they want?"

x x x

Eduardo and Kylie took Conchita to the firehouse with them the next day, because they had received countless requests from people wanting to see her. Amazingly Joey Jackson was there _again_, determined to see this black eye for himself. Kevin, Beth and even Carl Rivera paid a visit around lunchtime to enquire after their niece/cousin, and shortly after that Peter and Jessica Venkman turned up. The team was out on a job when they arrived, so that only Spenglers and small Riveras were present.

"Any news on the Dr. Shipp situation?" Peter asked Janine. "Wasn't it today she was going to do her 'tests' on the kid who punches pretty little girls?"

"How I should I know?" Janine returned disinterestedly.

"She was giving your two some funny looks yesterday, you know," Jessica told her. "Did you know they tried to make a bomb out of Ray's jacket?"

"Not until the explosion," Janine answered dryly.

"It could have been worse," Jessica pointed out. "It just went pop and made a small flame. John told me that in _Knight Rider_ somebody's jacket blew a whole door off."

"I ought to check on that," mused Janine. "After such a disappointingly small explosion he seems determined to prove that you can make a bomb out of clothes."

"Egon _is_ watching them, isn't he?" Peter asked warily.

Egon himself answered that question in the negative by walking into the room with Rose Rivera on one arm. She was grizzling quietly, and for some reason hitting him repeatedly in the face. Peter and Jessica exchanged comic looks of alarm, and then the latter went upstairs while Peter found himself cornered by Egon and an unhappy baby.

"Thank goodness you're here," Egon said gratefully. "You have experience with moody little girls."

"She's just bored, Egon," reasoned Peter, taking the baby from him. Then he went on, in enthusiastic baby talk, "You're bored, aren't you!"

"No," snapped Rose.

"How's your sister?" asked Peter.

"'K."

"Still got a black eye?"

"Yes."

"But she's happier now."

"Yes."

"That's amazing," marvelled Peter. "You're a very clever girl, aren't you?"

"No."

Jessica, meanwhile, was offering her sympathies to poor bruised little Conchita. She was on the sofa eating cookies that John and Eden had brought to her, bless 'em. Jessica was examining the black eye, her brow furrowed disapprovingly. Ok, so Conchita could be irritatingly chirpy at times, but she didn't deserve that.

"I hope you hit him back," said Jessica.

"I thought about it," Conchita told her, "but Joey got there before I had time to decide."

"I don't think you would have," Eden cut in. "You're much too nice."

"Need some more cookies?" asked John, when he saw that Conchita was running low.

"Thanks," Conchita smiled weakly, "but I'm kinda full."

"I could use some cookies," said Jessica.

"Well you know where the kitchen is," retorted John. "Hey… what are your pants made of?"

They were vaguely aware of the sound of the Ecto-1 returning downstairs. Jessica made her way into the kitchen, John trotting along beside her and fingering the seam on the left leg of her jeans. They were about four sizes too big for her, and a slightly faded black with a number of unnecessary pockets and metal attachments.

"Hands off," Jessica ordered sternly, helping herself to a particularly large chocolate chip cookie. "You're not making a bomb out of these pants, ok? I've been waiting years for these. Oscar guarded them so carefully that I never got a chance to steal them, but he's _finally_ grown out of them."

"They're only pants," said John, somewhat scornfully. "You Venkmans are all obsessed with image."

"They are not _only_ pants," retorted Jessica. "This is the single coolest pair of pants in the whole world. And at least it's a fairly safe obsession. What's this fascination with bombs anyway?"

"I like explosions," John shrugged dismissively.

"But _why_? Creating explosions is destructive and pointless. Actually don't answer that – I _know_ why. It's because you're a man, isn't it – you're all obsessed with explosions and breasts."

"I'm _not_ obsessed with breasts," John argued indignantly, just as an unwelcome visitor sauntered into the room.

"Oh John, look, it's Dr. Shipp!" Jessica exclaimed through a false smile. "She's wearing nylon stockings, Johnny. They could cause quite a bang."

"She'd never give them to me," John decided.

"That's ok. I'll hold her down and you can rip them off."

"_Excuse_ me?" exclaimed Dr. Shipp.

"You need to learn to take a joke," Jessica told her matter-of-factly. "Or at least recognise one. So what is it this time? Are you here to tell us why it was ok for that little bastard to punch Conchita in the face?"

"You're not supposed to swear in front of me," John pointed out. "Hey, look, Kylie left her thingumy-whatsit behind," and he picked up Kylie's Japanese pendant from the table.

"Careless," remarked Jessica, taking it from him. "Something or _somebody_ must have distracted her yesterday and made her forget about it."

"Actually," Dr. Shipp ventured, "I came about - "

"Hey, the uniforms!" John suddenly exclaimed. "Something on there will probably explode with the right encouragement!" and he ran out of the kitchen, almost knocking Dr. Shipp off her feet.

"Are those children's parents here?" Dr. Shipp asked stiffly.

"Whose – Johnny and Eden's?" asked Jessica. "Yeah, they're around. Didn't you see them on your way in?"

"No. I only saw your father with a very small girl. Interesting specimen – she looked almost murderous. Is she your sister?"

"Please, she's far too pretty to be one of us. And besides, my parents don't do that anymore. She's Eduardo and Kylie's daughter." Jessica's thumb was distractedly tracing the outline of the Japanese symbol as she spoke, the leather cord hanging limply from between her fingers.

"Oh yes, I see the resemblance," Dr. Shipp remarked nonchalantly. "Well, that may account for the… hostility. Now then, the parents of the other two?"

"If you're going to work with children you should learn their names," Jessica opined.

"If you're going to converse with adults you should learn some manners," retorted Dr. Shipp. "Where are they?"

"Haven't a clue. You should have asked my dad – he saw them last. Or did Rose glare you out of the room before you had a chance to speak to him?"

Dr. Shipp suddenly changed the subject. "Nice outfit," she remarked, obviously feeling smug and superior in her Armani.

"Thanks, it was my brother's," Jessica smiled insincerely.

"Was it?" Dr. Shipp raised a non-committal eyebrow. "Well, must get on."

"Good luck finding them," Jessica called after her, as she turned and stalked out.

Dr. Shipp noticed Conchita on her way out and took a moment to look at her, paying close attention of course to the black eye. Conchita felt the woman's eagle eyes on her, which made her uncomfortable, so she tried to break the ice with a polite smile.

"Hello again, Dr. Shipp," Eden greeted the doctor pleasantly.

"Where are your parents?" Dr. Shipp asked bluntly.

"There they are."

Dr. Shipp followed Eden's gaze to the doorway, through which a small procession of people was filing. Egon and Roland led it, earnestly discussing the job from which the team had just returned, John Spengler following behind the latter and tugging on the legs of his jumpsuit. Roland was politely ignoring this, but Janine was doing her level best to prise her son's hands away. Kylie came next carrying Rose, then Eduardo and finally Peter and Garrett. It was a much larger audience than Dr. Shipp had expected, and she couldn't really fail to pick up on the fact that these people didn't like her. But she didn't let her nervousness show.

"What are you doing here?" Kylie asked coldly.

"Well," Dr. Shipp began smilingly, "I finished Stephan's tests this morning. I've found strong evidence for Attention Deficit Disorder, which may account for the punch. His mother still thinks there's more to it than that, though. I shall keep looking."

"All ADD means is that kids get bored easily," volunteered Peter. "Imagine if every kid that got bored suddenly punched someone in the face. I _know_ you don't think that excuses it. So will you be prescribing the kid Ritalin or some other sedative?"

"His mother doesn't like the idea."

"Then what are you hoping to gain from all of this?"

"Why are you here?" Kylie asked again. "You don't have anything new to tell us."

Dr. Shipp's eyes slipped down to where Rose was leaning into her mother's shoulder. The child was giving her that look again, her brow furrowed and her brown eyes maliciously narrow – and she was sucking on her knuckles in a manner that was strangely threatening. Dr. Shipp tried to ignore her and went on, "Actually I'm here about the… um… the young Spenglers."

Janine reacted at once. "Are you kidding me?" she snapped.

"Perhaps a word in private?"

"Piss off!"

"Look," Kylie cut in, "nobody invited you here and you are not these kids' doctor. If you've got something to say about them you can say it in front of all of us."

"I'm just concerned." Dr. Shipp was addressing Janine and also Egon, who had taken a position of allegiance beside his wife. "Your son is definitely displaying symptoms of ADHD."

"What's the H stand for?" Garrett asked it first.

"Hyperactive," Peter cut in. "Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. Look lady, you only met him twice."

"Shut up, Dr. Venkman, I can handle this," snapped Janine. Then she turned back to Dr. Shipp and said, "Look, you smug self-satisfied judgemental bitch – you only met him twice! You don't know anything about him!"

Janine would happily have gone further; she only stopped because Jessica wandered in at that point, and what was following her caught every eye in the room. That definitely hadn't been in the kitchen before – _somebody _would have noticed. Dr. Shipp and John, who had been there most recently, were particularly confused. Jessica, however, seemed entirely unfazed. She fixed Dr. Shipp with a cool gaze and smiled serenely, "His name is Jonathan, Dr. Shipp. I wish you'd take my advice."

"B-but…" stammered Dr. Shipp.

"What?" Jessica asked innocently, following Dr. Shipp's astonished stare with an air of confusion. "This is my friend Hikaru," and she nodded towards the stereotypically dressed Oriental girl of about her own age who had followed her from the kitchen. "Don't you remember I introduced you in the kitchen just now?"

"No you didn't!" exclaimed Dr. Shipp. "She wasn't there!"

"Of course she was!" laughed Jessica. She then gently nudged the Oriental girl, who started laughing too. "You remember Dr. Shipp, right Hik?"

"Of course," Hikaru replied with a thick Japanese accent. "I offered you a glass of water, Dr. Shipp. Do not say you have forgotten me already."

"She was standing by the fridge," John cut in, correctly interpreting the look Jessica gave him as meaning _play along_. "And you think _I'm _crazy!"

"I don't think you're crazy," returned Dr. Shipp, quickly pulling herself together. "I just think - "

"Actually," John interrupted, "I _might _be able to make a bomb out of that nylon. I still don't suppose you'd lend it to me, though."

Jessica couldn't help laughing. She pulled John against her hip, tousled his hair and said, "You're not helping, Johnny. What about Eden, Dr. Shipp? You wanna slap a genius label on her or something?"

"Well actually…" Dr. Shipp began cautiously.

Eden was intrigued. She fixed Dr. Shipp with a cock-eyed look and asked, "Well?"

"Asperger's," replied Dr. Shipp, somewhat sheepishly.

"Asperger's?" Eden couldn't help but smile. "Interesting. Where's Slimer anyway? Maybe Dr. Shipp will support my diagnosis for him."

"_I_ think you're right about that, Edie," said Jessica. "I've never met anybody more autistic in my life. Dr. Shipp, I _don't_ think Eden has asperger's."

"Don't you, dear? And you know about these things, do you?" retorted Dr. Shipp.

"A little," shrugged Jessica. "And I _do_ know these kids. You've met them twice, _very_ briefly – no amount of medical knowledge gives you the right just to slap labels on them."

"Jess…" murmured Peter. He admired his daughter's nerve, but he knew how easily she could make enemies for herself.

"Well." Dr. Shipp looked again at Egon and Janine, her gaze lingering for a moment on Jessica's newly acquired Japanese friend. "Your children are obviously very intelligent. Making bombs out of jackets – that's… _unusual_. I suppose you encourage such activities?"

"Certainly not!" exclaimed Janine.

"Well," Egon calmly intervened, "of course we encourage them to try and learn."

"Mhm," Dr. Shipp nodded slowly. "I just wonder if perhaps you encourage them… a little too much?"

Janine looked about ready to explode. "Are you accusing us of pushing our kids?" she asked sharply.

"Well…"

"Well?"

"It's very bad for them, you know."

"But we don't push them!" shrieked Janine, growing anxious now for Egon's feelings. If anyone knew how bad parental pressure could be for children, _he _did.

"I really think my wife and I are more than qualified to judge things like that for ourselves," Egon added sternly. "Janine even worked professionally with children for a time in the nineteen-nineties."

"Really?" Dr. Shipp asked interestedly, looking at Janine. "Doing what?"

Janine rolled her eyes, thinking that this argument probably wouldn't go any way to helping her cause. "Wiping noses and washing out paint pots," she said dryly.

"Ah," Dr. Shipp smiled smugly. "I see. Well, I'm sure the experience has proved very useful to you, but _I'm_ a doctor."

"My dad's _two_ doctors," Jessica suddenly announced.

"Excuse me, dear?" queried Dr. Shipp. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"I have two PhDs," explained Peter. "Besides which I know these kids, and I don't think they have anything."

Surprisingly the mysterious Hikaru was the next person to intervene. "Excuse me, Dr. Shipp," she said calmly, "but I cannot help but feel you are upsetting people unnecessarily. Not to be rude, but is this really any of your business?"

Jessica flashed her a grateful smile while Dr. Shipp glared hatefully at her. "Where did you even _come_ from?" she asked desperately.

"I told you that in the kitchen just now," Jessica was adamant. "She's a friend from school."

Dr. Shipp looked at Peter, who wasn't reacting however much he wanted to. He caught her gaze, and by some instinct he nodded a false confirmation.

"Interesting," remarked Dr. Shipp. "You struck me as the kind of girl who finds it easier to befriend boys."

"I do," Jessica admitted, without really knowing why. Donna Shipp was surely the last person to offer personal information to. "Most of my friends are boys."

"Is this your _only_ female friend?" asked Dr. Shipp.

Peter decided to intervene. He thought he could see where this was going, and that made him pretty angry – besides which he knew that Jessica wouldn't like it. "Dr. Shipp," he ventured. "Please. She's twelve. I'm sure she'll figure it out for herself."

"Huh?" queried Jessica, pulling a face.

"Look," Kylie cut in, "you've pissed enough people off for today. Nobody asked you here and we certainly didn't ask you to start diagnosing our children. I think you should leave."

"I'm certain of it," Janine put in. "Go on – get lost. And if you ever come anywhere near my kids again I'll - "

"Come on, Dr. Shipp." Peter took the doctor's arm and steered her gently towards the door. "That's enough for today. Thank you for your professional opinion. Obviously it's much more valid than that of a lowly psychologist like me."

Peter was grateful to get rid of her. Obviously Jessica's new companion had provided a lucky spur-of-the-moment opportunity to get one over on Dr. Shipp, but now he wanted to find out who she _really_ was.

When Peter went back upstairs, Jessica was handing Kylie some kind of trinket and saying casually, "You left this here yesterday. Did you _know_ there was the spirit of a Japanese princess trapped inside it?"

x x x

On Monday morning, Kylie received a puzzling letter from her maternal grandfather. Jeremy Davies had lost contact with both of his daughters years ago. Kylie barely remembered him, and her cousin Matthew hadn't even been born when his mother/Jeremy's younger daughter decided to have nothing more to do with the man. Therefore Kylie found it faintly worrying that Jeremy had somehow learnt of Matt's existence. Worse than that, he had obviously got hold of both of their addresses – and from what Kylie could remember, her grandfather was not the kind of man to be trusted with that kind of information.

"This is so weird," she confided to her cousin Matt Fowler-Davies over the phone, the letter in her hand, minutes after opening it. Eduardo had just left to take Conchita to preschool, and Kylie had one eye on Rose who was steadily working her way through a chopped-up apple. "I mean… why now?"

"Well it's obvious, isn't it?" returned Matt, who was very cynical for someone a few months shy of twenty. "He's in his eighties and he thinks he might be going to die soon, so he's asking us all to go and see him so he can figure out who to leave his money to."

"You think?" Kylie asked dubiously. "It's a weird kind of letter." She started to read aloud from it: "_'I would like to re-establish contact with my daughters Jillian and Madelyn, and with my grandchildren Kylie and Matthew.'_ He seems to think we don't know who we are."

"Or who _he _is," mused Matt. "Well he can't very well re-establish contact with _me_ – I never even met the man."

"Are you gonna go see him?"

"Sure, if there's an inheritance in it for me."

Kylie answered him with a dubious little noise.

"Well I never met him so I can't begrudge him anything but his absence," reasoned Matt. "And I don't mind prostituting myself. Don't you go and see him, though. I'll go, and if he leaves me any money I'll put your half in the girls' college fund, ok?"

"_My_ half?" questioned Kylie. "No it's not ok! I don't want his money."

"Was he that bad?" asked Matt. "Mom can't even bear to talk about him."

"I don't remember him that well," Kylie admitted. "But I remember that he treated Dad very badly, and I found him really intimidating. Apparently he hit Grandma a couple of times – that's why she left. He was a big guy – probably still is, I suppose."

"Really?" asked Matt. "Then how come we're all so tiny?"

"I guess Grandma has strong short genes."

"Well he sounds like an asshole. Personally I think the least he could do is leave something behind for his great-grandchildren."

"Do you think he's found out about them?"

"Well he found out about _me_. Look Ky, just don't worry about it, ok? I'll try to find out more. I'd better go now, though – I've got to work. Hug both of the girls for me, and tell Chita I'll be down with her birthday present as soon as I can get away."

x x x

Jill was even more alarmed about Jeremy having her address than Kylie was, as she had only been living in Manhattan since December. He must have acquired the information very quickly, and she imagined him hiring the mafia to follow her. She had worse memories of Jeremy than anyone except her mother, and his letter actually had her quite scared. Not wanting to alarm her mother and knowing that her sister wouldn't be much help, she did the only thing she could think of and called Steve.

"Ignore it," he advised, once they'd met up back at the Starbucks. "It's only a letter. So he knows where you live – he's not going to come breaking the door down."

"Steve!" exclaimed Jill, her eyes wide with alarm.

"Sorry." Steve knew how scared Jill was of her father. "I don't believe he really wants to see you. He's just testing you – he's probably trying to figure out what to do with his money when he dies."

"Huh," muttered Jill. "If he's going to die I wish he'd hurry up and do it. What about Kylie and Matt? Do you think they will?"

"I'm sure Kylie wouldn't. She must remember what he's like. And Matt never met him, so I guess he'd have no reason to want to go."

"Dad probably wants to see him, though. He's Sean's son, after all."

"It still angers and amazes me that your dad liked Sean and hated me," Steve said dryly.

"I know!" Jill suddenly exclaimed. "You had a career and Sean had a drinking problem!"

"I'm still convinced your dad genuinely wanted to kill me."

"Actually I kinda think he did too."

"So what now?" Steve asked gently. "Pretend it never happened?"

Jill shook her head. "I can't," she said quietly. "It's too much of a coincidence. It's been… what – about twenty years? Longer, even. So why now? Maybe it's karma. It's less than a year since I started trying to get back in touch with Kylie. How can I ignore this and still think I have any right to try and let myself back into my daughter's life?"

"You never hit anybody," reasoned Steve. "You were never abusive – you were just young. Whatever you've done wasn't nearly as bad as what your father did."

"What are you saying _that_ for?" Jill asked suspiciously. "It's not what you really think. You think I blew my chance with Kylie and I've made my bed and all that."

"You _did _blow your chance with Kylie," Steve agreed. "But… well, funny that you should get this letter from Jeremy. I blamed him for most of it, you know."

"Most of what?"

"What happened to us. I blamed myself too, but I tried so hard and I didn't think it could have been _all_ my fault. And I still loved you then, so I didn't want to blame you. But then I realised that all the problems you had must have been rooted in him."

"Very Freudian," Jill remarked dryly. "I don't believe my father had that much of an influence over me. _Nobody_ did. It's me – I'm the idiot. I screwed up all by myself."

"I really believe that _he _screwed you up," Steve insisted. "You _and_ Maddy. He hit your mother right in front of you, for Christ's sake."

"Could you maybe do me a favour and say all of this to Kylie?" asked Jill, half-serious.

"Actually," Steve said evenly, "I might just do that."

x x x

Egon and Janine arrived at the firehouse after dropping the twins off at school, Janine still in her foul mood from the day before. She hadn't stopped ranting about Dr. Shipp since Peter and Jessica took away the distraction of the Japanese princess about sixteen hours previously. Egon could swear that she'd even been murmuring about Shipp in her sleep.

"Does it really matter that much?" he asked, leaning back against his desk. "I don't think we really need to worry about what she thinks."

"Well she _is_ a professional," Janine pointed out. "If she really thinks all that stuff, can't she… you know… _do_ something?"

"I doubt it," Egon replied calmly. "Remember what the school's educational psychologist said about them: 'individual and eccentric, but nothing to worry about.' And besides, a doctor's opinion is not worth much if unasked for."

"You're a doctor," Janine suddenly announced, as though she thought it might be news to him. "If there was anything wrong with them you'd spot it, right?" She paused for a moment, and then asked, "So are you… ok?"

Egon suddenly realised that she was giving him that doe-eyed look. It was the kind of "are you ok" that made him wonder if perhaps he wasn't ok, even though he thought he was – maybe she knew something he didn't.

"Why wouldn't I be ok?" he asked reasonably.

"Well…" Janine faltered, "some of the things she said were… a little close to home… maybe?"

"You mean the insinuation that we're pushing?"

Janine nodded mutely.

"Dr. Shipp obviously doesn't know what 'pushing' is, but she didn't mean to speak out of turn. That's just in her nature, it seems. She doesn't know how I was brought up; nor does she know how our children are being brought up. As you so delicately pointed out yesterday, she has only been here twice. She made a snap judgement and it was wrong. It doesn't matter."

"It doesn't bother you?"

"If someone I knew well like Peter said we were pushing them, or if we were warned of it by a doctor who had been observing us closely over a period of time, _then_ I might be worried."

"I _know_ you're not _worried_," Janine almost snapped. "I thought you might be _upset_."

"I don't think I take these things to heart quite as much as you do," Egon remarked. "I'm not upset, and don't you be either. Dr. Shipp is just…" – he considered for a moment – "who _is_ she?"

"The doctor of the kid who punched Conchita in the face."

"Exactly. Not the kind of person we need to get upset about. Ah." He looked up and switched on a smile of welcome as his eye caught the approach of Peter and Dana Venkman and the Ancient Japanese princess they had been minding. "Good morning. Hello, Hikaru. I trust your stay with Dr. Venkman's family was a pleasant one?"

"Thank you, Dr. Spengler – yes," Hikaru bowed politely.

"Very wise, I think, making her look inconspicuous," Egon remarked to Peter.

"Well actually that was her idea," Peter confessed. "Apparently the fashions of her culture do not appeal."

Hikaru looked so different from the day before that Egon and Janine wouldn't have recognised her if they hadn't known perfectly well who she was. Gone was the traditional brightly coloured _Mulan_-esque ensemble from the day before. She was wearing some of Oscar's old clothes, now owned by Jessica: an oversized khaki t-shirt, beige combat trousers, hulking black boots and a hoodie tied around her waist. She wore her straight dark hair loose, and wouldn't have looked at all out of place on the streets of New York.

"I find I like twenty-first century New York," Hikaru told Egon. "Jessica's clothes are indeed comfortable and intriguing. She and her very charming brother also introduced me to a delightful dish they call pizza and to the music of Avril Lavigne and the Red Hot Chili Peppers."

"They're a bad influence on you," remarked Dana, whose very presence Egon and Janine both found somewhat baffling. "What _are_ we going to do with you, honey?"

"First I think we should find out exactly how she got here and whether we can send her back," Egon cut in.

"But Dr. Spengler, I do not want to go back," objected Hikaru. "I was unhappy at home. I deliberately made sure that the pendant was never returned to my father. But you cannot send me back," she added confidently. "Time travel is impossible, surely. I cannot go back in time thousands of years."

"Thousands?" Egon cocked an eyebrow. "I find it interesting that you speak English so well."

"The pendant was passed among the hands of English-speaking people for several centuries," explained Hikaru. "I could not really help but learn the language."

"Where _is_ the pendant?" asked Egon. "Did Kylie take it?"

"I think so," replied Peter. "Shall I call and ask her to bring it?"

"Thank you, yes," Egon nodded, so Peter moved off to the phone. "I must confess, Hikaru, I find you quite fascinating. You appear to be quite human."

"I _am_ human, sir. This body is identical to the one I occupied in Japan all those centuries ago. It simply materialised when Jessica freed me from the pendant. I do not see how it can be real, and yet it seems very much so."

"Yes, I shall have to look into that," mused Egon. Then he plucked a PKE meter from his desk and asked politely, "May I?"

"May you what?" Hikaru asked guardedly.

"It won't hurt," Janine cut in, hoping to spare the poor girl the long and complicated explanation that Egon probably wanted to give. "It'll just help us figure out what's going on with you."

"Very well," Hikaru agreed. "But I can tell you what happened myself."

"I shall be interested to hear it," Egon said distractedly, frowning in thought at his PKE meter. "You're a giving off a very strong reading. But I suppose as you are a Japanese princess a few thousand years old, this is hardly surprising."

x x x

"Hey." Kylie ran into Steve just outside her apartment building, Rose struggling with the straps imprisoning her in her pushchair. "You're late this morning. You almost missed us."

_Crap, I'm late. Excuse? Ah hell…_ "Sorry."

"You'll never guess what," Kylie went on chattily, starting to walk and Steve falling into step beside her and the pushchair. "I've only got a letter from _Jeremy_."

"Really?"

"You don't sound surprised."

"I learnt years ago not to be surprised by anything that man does. So what did he want?"

"To see me. And Matt. And Maddy and _that woman_."

Steve sighed deeply, wondering just _why_ he was going to do what he was about to do. "Maddy and Jill won't see him," he told Kylie. "With the way he treated them and their mother I'm surprised they weren't irreparably damaged."

"Yeah right," snorted Kylie. "They _were_ irreparably damaged. Maddy isn't exactly what you might call normal, and Jill…"

"She got the worst of it," Steve said gravely. "Well – actually – your grandmother got the worst of it. But he hit Jill once … and anyway that was nothing to the emotional abuse she used to get from him."

"I'm not going to see him if that's what you're worried about."

"Good."

"Matt is."

"Really? Yikes – I'd better call Maddy and warn her."

"Why are you suddenly so chummy with the Davies clan?" asked Kylie. "You and Jill are divorced – they're nothing to do with you now."

"You know, in a strange sort of way, your grandfather united all of us," mused Steve. "He was a common enemy. That he was a complete ass was the only thing your mother and Maddy could agree on."

Kylie suddenly stopped, looked at him sharply and asked, "Why do you keep talking about Jill?"

_Just quit while you're ahead…_ "Just hearing about Jeremy after all this time has got me thinking. What Jill did… how she was… surely he's to blame."

"Are you defending what she did?" snapped Kylie.

"I don't know," sighed Steve, beginning now to look for a way to dig himself out of this hole. "But there _are_ reasons."

It developed into an argument that continued all the way to the firehouse. Kylie wasn't interested in reasons. There was a reason for everything, but some things were just inexcusable. Steve reminded Kylie that she was four the last time she saw her grandfather and six when her mother left, so she couldn't remember either of them well enough to make that kind of judgement. Kylie then argued that she'd had a lousy childhood too, blaming her mother and even throwing in a dig about her father's prolonged absences, but she still loved her daughters tremendously – and Eduardo too – so whatever had been going on in Jill's warped mind when she left must have come from inside rather than out.

Steve thought of Jill's words to him half an hour before: _"I don't believe my father had that much of an influence over me… I screwed up all by myself." _Jill was so headstrong that she wouldn't allow anyone else credit for anything she did – not even her worst mistakes. Steve admired her for having the courage to hold her hands up and admit that she'd done something wrong. Kylie was very like her mother in that respect… in more ways than she would ever admit. Steve genuinely believed that Eduardo had fallen in love with Kylie for all the same reasons he himself had fallen in love with Jill. As he had told Jill a few days ago, he saw it all in Conchita and Rose as well, though he wouldn't dream of saying that to Kylie.

"Why start this now anyway?" Kylie demanded hotly, as she made her spectacular entrance into the firehouse, distractedly parking Rose's pushchair somewhere near Janine's (currently empty) desk. "You've _always _blamed Jill."

"No – I've always blamed _him_," argued Steve. "I loved her, don't forget."

"Yeah, well, love is blind and all that. Surely you've realised by now."

"You weren't even there."

"So what do you want me to do?" challenged Kylie. "You want me to give her another chance – is that it?"

"Well… maybe." _Oh God…_

"WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?" she shrieked.

"I'm not taking sides," Steve said sternly. "I don't believe it's as black-and-white as all that. And I _know_ you're my daughter but Jill was my wife."

"Sure," Kylie agreed. "I'm still your daughter. She _was_ your wife. _She left you_!"

Eduardo had arrived at the firehouse some minutes ago, and understandably the unmistakable sound of the woman he loved becoming hysterical brought him downstairs. He immediately caught sight of Rose, who was staring at her mother and grandfather in sheer bafflement, her tiny fingers poised on the straps confining her to her pushchair. Eduardo walked over to her, quickly undid the fastenings (Rose obviously wondering why she couldn't do it so easily) and lifted her into his arms. She bunched a little fist on the shoulder of his jacket, giving him a look that seemed to say: _So they've finally snapped, then._

"I know it was hard for you," Steve was saying calmly. "You were just a kid, and of course Jill shouldn't have left you like that. But you're older now – you've got kids of your own. I thought maybe you'd understand - "

"Stop patronising me!" snapped Kylie. "You must be insane if you think you're gonna make me change my mind about your ex-wife!"

"But doesn't it mean anything to you that she's _sorry_?" Steve asked desperately. "She's been living in a hole working her ass off in a crummy little diner to pay the rent in the vague hope that someday you might forgive her!"

"How the hell do you know that?" demanded Kylie.

_Oh shit, shouldn't have said that…_ "I've seen her."

"What – here? Why the hell didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you'd get upset."

"Did you talk to her?"

He couldn't tell an outright lie. "Sure," shrugged Steve. "She told me a lot that I didn't know. And she really is sorry."

"It's too late to be sorry!" yelled Kylie. "What the hell do you think you're doing talking to her? I can't believe you'd betray me like that!"

"I didn't betray you," argued Steve. "You've chosen not to have anything to do with her but that doesn't mean I have to do the same. We were married, and we were friends, and it's my decision who I talk to."

"YOU WANT TO BE HER _FRIEND_?" Kylie was shouting so loud her throat was hurting. "AFTER WHAT SHE _DID _TO ME?"

"She left me too, you know," snapped Steve. "You're not the only one who got hurt."

"YOU INSENSITIVE TREACHEROUS _BASTARD_!" yelled Kylie. She instinctively snatched up the closest object to hand, which happened to be a particularly hefty stapler, and hurled it straight at her father.

"Whoa!" exclaimed Steve, ducking what could even have been a fatal blow to the head. "Kylie, for God's sake calm down!"

"GET OUT!" yelled Kylie, her fingers closing around an alarmingly large hole-punch.

Steve, obviously afraid, felt he had no choice but to retreat – at least for the moment. He backed hastily out of the door; Kylie breathed out and relaxed her grip on the hole-punch. She still felt overwhelmingly angry, and was aware that her heart rate was abnormally high. Feeling about ready to explode, she turned round and applied a powerful kick to a leg on the desk. Then she caught sight of Eduardo and Rose, both staring at her through identical brown eyes with identical shocked expressions. Suddenly stunned into equanimity, Kylie pushed back her hair and walked towards them in a dignified manner.

"Sorry about that," she smiled weakly.

"What the hell happened?" Eduardo wanted to know.

"Nothing."

"_What_?"

"I'll tell you later," she corrected herself. Then, nodding towards Rose, "Is she ok?"

"I think so."

Kylie took Rose from Eduardo's arms, hugged her perhaps a little too tightly and said softly, "I'm sorry, baby. You know I'll never leave you, don't you?" Then she looked up at Eduardo and asked, "Did Chita get off ok?"

"Sure."

"Where's Egon? I brought that stupid pendant specially because he wants it."

"In the lab."

"Thanks. Here." She handed Rose back to him. "See you soon," and she made her way calmly in the direction of Egon's lab.

x x x

Janine, Peter and Dana were all in the lab, watching the proceedings from a short distance. They hoped to hear something that would satisfy their curiosity, but for the moment what was happening was all very mundane. Hikaru was sitting on the table, her hands gripping the edges on either side of her, Egon stooping in front of her and peering into her open mouth with a torch. He stood up straight when he heard the door click open, and was glad to see Kylie there with the pendant.

"Thank you," he said, holding out his hand for it. "Will you be needing this back, Hikaru?"

"I believe not, Dr. Spengler," Hikaru smiled politely. Then she looked at Kylie and said, "You must give it to your little girl."

"Thank you," Kylie said automatically, though with everything on her mind she didn't feel particularly grateful. If Egon or Hikaru had wanted to keep her pendant, she would have made them reimburse her twelve dollars.

"Your body seems entirely real, Hikaru," Egon went on distractedly, now examining the pendant in his hand.

"Well," mused Hikaru, "my father's magician _did _say that my body would be suspended on another physical plane and return to me when I came out of the pendant. I did not believe it at the time, but then I did not believe that any of it would work. Nor did I believe in the demon, come to that."

"Why don't you tell us what happened from the beginning?" suggested Janine.

"The beginning…" Hikaru frowned thoughtfully. "Well, as I say, I was unhappy at home. I was a princess, very cosseted, I was not allowed to do anything or see anything. When I did go outside the palace, the streets were cleared and an entire army would accompany me."

"I've read stories like that," remarked Kylie, thinking of the _Arabian Nights_ collection she had recently purchased to read aloud to her daughters. "I've come across a lot of eastern myths. Nothing quite like that though," and she nodded towards the pendant in Egon's hand. "Still, it seems in those kinda stories anything goes."

"I was imprisoned in it for my protection," Hikaru explained. "It was because I was so overprotected that I used to sneak out of the palace at nights. One night I went to a temple where my father always made me pray to the Gods, and I destroyed a sacred shrine."

"No wonder she gets on so well with Jess," Peter murmured to Dana.

"I did not like praying to the Gods, you see," Hikaru went on. "I used to pray for freedom, from when I was a very small girl. When it never came I decided that I either did not believe in the Gods, or I did not care for them. The woman who looked after me found out I had been to the shrine by the chalk on my clothes – it was from some silly picture of a God or something. She beat me until I told her what I had done. Then she started to cry and ran to my father. I was told that the shrine was guarded by a malevolent demon, and that it would come and kill me for what I did. My mother and father were most anxious, so they consulted their magician. I did not care for him either. He said that he would imprison me in a protecting icon where I would be safe from the demon, and that he would bring me out when he had found a way either to appease or to destroy it. I did not believe that it would work, as I told you, but also I hoped that it would so I could escape. I talked to a messenger boy called Kota, who was secretly a great friend of mine. I gave him some gold and I said that if the spell worked, he must steal the pendant and sell it or give it away. He was to tell whoever he gave it to that I was trapped inside, and how to release me."

"That little anecdote must have been lost before it got to me," remarked Kylie. "The store guy _did_ mention something about a princess once owning it, though. He warned me that legend had it she disappeared two weeks before her thirteenth birthday so maybe it didn't work that well."

"I heard," Hikaru told her. "The story has been much depleted over the years. In truth the symbol has protected me even from time, for I am still young."

"And from the demon," Dana cut in. "Do you know what happened there?"

"I still do not believe there is any demon," Hikaru answered dismissively.

"You don't?" asked Peter. "Even though you went into the pendant and came out a few thousand years later looking as fresh as a daisy? You don't think maybe if that's possible, demons might exist?"

"I do not know," shrugged Hikaru. "Surely it does not matter now. I am very grateful to Jessica for releasing me. I was beginning to think that I would never get out."

"I think she probably did it by accident," said Peter. "How exactly _did_ she get you out?" Obviously he couldn't ask Jessica herself, as she was at school.

"She traced the shape of the emblem with her thumb and then held it in her fist. It is perfectly simple."

"And a wonder nobody's done it before now," remarked Janine. "Funny that Jessica should be the one to let you out after all this time."

"And convenient for you, Hikaru," added Egon. "You have found us sympathetic to your situation. To us, however, you are something of a nuisance. What are we to do with you now?"

"Perhaps she has family in Japan," suggested Peter.

"Some religious extremists in Japan could well be delighted to hear that we've freed one of their ancestors from a pendant, and they might even be happy to receive her," Kylie cut in. "Maybe we should make some calls."

"I'll do it," volunteered Janine. Admin was her job, after all. "Failing that we'll have to try and explain her away to Social Services."

x x x

Roland, Garrett and Eduardo were very interested to hear Hikaru's story from Kylie.

"She sounds a lot like Tara," remarked Roland, whose rebellious younger sister had struck out against her father in some pretty radical ways during her adolescence. "What a weird thing to happen."

"Weird stuff happens to us all the time," shrugged Garrett. "At least this one seems relatively safe."

"Just incredibly complicated," Kylie put in. She was on the floor, building towers from wooden blocks with Rose. Rose had been invited to knock a few of them down, and – all credit to her – she'd tried it. But it seemed to her a pretty thankless task, so by this time she had stopped.

"It's about time to go get Chita," Eduardo suddenly announced. "Then where do you wanna go for lunch, Ky?"

"I don't know, anywhere but here," mumbled Kylie.

"Are you ok?" Roland asked anxiously. He had noticed before now that Kylie didn't seem quite herself.

"Sure," shrugged Kylie getting to her feet and then lifting Rose after her. "C'mon babe," she said to Eduardo. "We'll be back later in the afternoon, guys, ok? Dr. Venkman still seems to be hanging around so you'll probably be ok without us for a while."

They walked to the school at a fairly slow pace, Rose feeling thoroughly peeved about being back in the pushchair while her parents quietly discussed Kylie's argument with her father.

"Was he right?" she asked Eduardo.

"I don't know," he answered truthfully. "Of course it's up to Steve who he does and doesn't talk to, and they _do_ have a lot of history. If you and I ever split up I'd hope someday we could go back to being friends. But on the other hand she really hurt you. You know how _I_ feel about anyone who hurts you, and I kinda thought your dad would feel the same."

"I think if you hurt these guys" – she nodded down towards Rose – "as much as she hurt me, I wouldn't ever forgive you."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Of course you wouldn't. I'm only saying."

"Well, he'll want to make up with you. Maybe he'll even give in – you and the girls are all he's got and he'd do anything to keep you."

"We won't be all he's got if he gets back together with _Jill_," spat Kylie.

"Nobody said they wanted to get back together," reasoned Eduardo, as they walked onto the quad outside the preschool building. "Oops – we're a bit late."

"They're only just starting to send them out. Chita probably won't notice."

The practice was for a teacher to stand by the window and send the children out as soon as a parent or guardian was spotted. When Conchita came out, conspicuous in her bubblegum-pink t-shirt and lighter pink skirt, she was followed by Sarah Kendall: one of the teachers who coincidentally was the mother of Garrett's fiancée Jo. It was probably because she knew Eduardo and Kylie outside school that she had been sent.

"Hello sweetheart." Eduardo crouched down and hugged Conchita tightly. "How was your day?"

"Good," she answered smilingly. "Nobody hit me today."

"Speaking of which," Sarah smiled weakly at Kylie, "we've had that woman who upsets everybody here today. I mean Donna Shipp," she added, catching Eduardo and Kylie's puzzled expressions. "She wants to see you. We said we'd arrange an appointment for you both here, but she went striding off on her three-inch heels muttering about going to see you at work later. I thought I should warn you."

"Oh I don't believe it," Kylie sighed despairingly. "When it rains it pours. Well, thanks for the warning. We'll gear ourselves up for it."

x x x

At the time Eduardo and Kylie left, Janine had been tracing Hikaru's family tree on the Internet. When Peter's flash silver car pulled up in the foyer full of kids a little over two hours later, she was on the phone being forced to listen to Bach while she waited for someone to connect her to a useful sounding person in Japan.

Dana and her seventeen-year-old son Oscar climbed out of the front of the car, followed by Peter. Jessica appeared out of the back and then the twins, who made for their mother. Janine tried to hug them while at the same time not dropping the phone.

"Thanks," she smiled weakly at Peter, as he had agreed to do the school run for her. "I've been on hold for almost twenty minutes and even when someone deals with me it'll probably be ages before they can connect me with the people I want. And the first of Hikaru's descendants I try will probably think I'm crazy – _if_ I can communicate with them – and then I'll have to start all over again to get the next lot."

"I'll take over if you want me to," Oscar offered generously. "How _is_ Hikaru? Did she tell you anything?"

"Ask her yourself," replied Janine, nodding towards where Hikaru herself was wandering into the room.

"Hello," she smiled pleasantly, looking particularly at the two kids.

The four Venkmans then proceeded to engage in a conversation with Hikaru. Janine had had about as much Bach as she could take, and she was seriously contemplating bashing the phone against the desk for punishment. But then Eden tapped her arm and asked politely, "May I use your computer?"

"What for, sweetheart?" asked Janine.

"I want to look up asperger's syndrome on the Internet."

"Oh. Sure. Argh – enough classical music already!"

x x x

It took a while for the lunch plan to come through, and Kylie was halfway through a grilled cheese sandwich when she caught sight of the café's wall clock and realised that it was mid-afternoon and her father planned to catch a train in less than an hour. Conchita was enjoying her curly fries too much to be disturbed, so Kylie told her family that she had to nip out for a bit and if anyone wanted the rest of her sandwich they could have it. As soon as she was out of the door Eduardo cut the sandwich down the middle and gave half to Conchita.

Steve was at his hotel as Kylie had hoped. More specifically he was dithering outside the main entrance, wondering whether it was safe to go to the firehouse yet or if maybe Kylie would be more likely to look for him at her apartment. The relief was visible on his face when he caught sight of her approach.

"I have to go in about twenty minutes," he told her. "I'm sorry. You were right. I won't see Jill again."

"Ah Dad, you can see her again if you really want to," Kylie sighed deeply, making it quite obvious that she didn't like the idea. "Just as long as I don't have to know about it." Then she thought for a moment and added, "Sorry I threw a stapler at you."

"It's ok." He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and kissed her forehead. "I probably deserved it. And I'm sorry I snapped at you and of course I never should have tried to defend what Jill did to you and… I'm sorry."

For Kylie, each apology held a little less significance than the last. Eduardo had been right: Steve would do anything to keep her, and a list of phoney apologies was easy.

"Can I say goodbye to the girls before I go?" he asked.

"Of course you can. C'mon – they're in a café a couple of blocks away."

While Steve was hugging his granddaughters, he distinctly felt a bad vibe emanating from Eduardo. It worried him, but he couldn't challenge it in front of Kylie and the girls, and anyway there was no point. He could hear the conversation now:

"_What's that face for?"_

"_What the hell do you think you're doing upsetting Kylie like that?"_

"_Jill was my wife, Eduardo. And she's an old friend and she needed me."_

"_Kylie's your daughter and Jill broke her heart. If anyone hurt my girls as much as Jill - "_

"_What if it was Kylie?"_

"_She wouldn't."_

"_What if she did?"_

"_I don't know. I can't imagine it, because I know she wouldn't."_

"_I used to think that about Jill."_

_Oh wait… no I didn't._

"Goodbye, sweetheart." Steve was on his last hug: Conchita's. "I'll call you on Saturday, ok?"

"Ok," Conchita agreed smilingly, evidently blissfully unaware of the _atmosphere_.

As he left the café for the rail station, Steve remembered that Jill knew Conchita's birthday. Would she try to do anything about it? If she just turned up in the middle of things it would cause terrible problems – she _must_ realise that. She hadn't put in any kind of appearance for Rose's birthday back in February. Perhaps she didn't know the date – she had at least seen a little of Kylie during Conchita's babyhood, but by the time Rose came along Jill was out of her daughter's life completely. Steve just didn't know what to expect from her now. Maybe he _should_ talk to her again…

x x x

Eden was tapping away at the computer keyboard a few yards away from Janine, who was _still_ on the damn telephone. She was wondering how the hell they were going to pay the bill for this all-afternoon call to Japan of all places. Listening to an old Beatles hit as once again she was put on hold (_I wonder when they'll start playing me Japanese music_), she decided that she'd make Peter cough up for this. Not only did the man have more money than he knew what to do with, but his daughter was the one responsible for the Hikaru problem. Hell, the man had even accepted responsibility of the girl when he took her home the day before – so obviously there was absolutely no good reason why he shouldn't pay for the phone call.

"Really?" That was Jessica, her voice wafting loudly over the top of the filing cabinets behind Janine and irritating her immensely. "That's so cool! Even _I_ wouldn't do that to a sacred place."

"I suppose it was wrong of me," mused Hikaru, who was sitting beside Jessica on the desk. "But the Gods did not do as I asked, as I had been told they would. It seemed a good way to let them know I was disappointed in them. But I would rather not talk about my old life. What else will you show me here?"

"We can take you to a movie at the weekend," offered Jessica.

"If I am still here."

"Or maybe one day after school. And I'll teach you to play soccer."

"Is that a game?"

"Yeah, it's a ball game. Tell you what – after school tomorrow I'll take you out and buy you a milkshake, and then I'll take you home and show you a game of soccer on TV. Jesus!" she exclaimed, when Dr. Shipp suddenly seemed to pounce from behind the filing cabinet. "Where the hell did _you_ spring from? You wouldn't be spying and sizing me up for one of your labels, would you, Dr. Shipp?"

"I don't believe there is any label that exists for you, my dear," Dr. Shipp smiled dryly.

"So make one up," retorted Jessica. "Isn't that what you guys do?"

"Sometimes. Is that another of your brother's cast-offs you're wearing?"

"Duh." It was cargo pants and a grey long-sleeved top under a red t-shirt.

"And your friend?" Dr. Shipp asked coolly, her eyes flitting from one twelve-year-old girl to the other and then running the vertical length of the small space between them. "You and she certainly dress alike."

"So?" Jessica asked sharply.

"Don't you have anything more feminine?" Dr. Shipp went on. "You're both pretty girls."

"What are you getting at?" demanded Jessica.

"Well…" Dr. Shipp said slowly. "I do wonder if you're a little… confused."

Jessica's eyebrows shot skyward. "You think I'm gender confused?"

"Many people take ownership of their older siblings' clothes, Dr. Shipp," Hikaru cut in, switching on that polite smile of hers.

"Good friends, are you?" Dr. Shipp enquired casually.

"Sure," shrugged Jessica. "But we only met recently. We're still getting to know each other."

"Ah." Dr. Shipp made an unreadable movement of her neatly trimmed eyebrows, and then started making her way upstairs as though she owned the place.

"Honestly!" fumed Jessica, sliding off the desk to go and look over Eden's shoulder. "Can you _believe_ that woman?"

"According to this," Eden suddenly announced, "I have a very logical mind. I am also dependant upon routine and cannot abide change. In matters of logic such as mathematics and science, I am likely to be very gifted. However I cannot understand complex emotions, jokes, metaphors or instructions that are not totally literal."

"Really?" Jessica asked disinterestedly. "Well at least you don't have penis envy."

x x x

Dr. Shipp didn't seem to mind a bit waiting for Eduardo and Kylie. When they and their kids finally did turn up, they went upstairs and found Dr. Shipp in the middle of an argument with Peter, Dana and Oscar, the latter two looking particularly frazzled.

"Look," Oscar was saying through clenched teeth, evidently making a real effort to stay calm, a pacifying hand on his mother's arm. "Not to be rude or anything, but you don't know me and you don't know my father."

"Which establishment do you work for?" Peter suddenly asked.

"I don't have to tell you that, Dr. Venkman," Dr. Shipp smiled serenely.

"Sure you do," argued Peter. "If you're gonna start psychoanalysing my children."

"Not many people get free advice from me," retorted Dr. Shipp. "And I wish to point out that I have not said anything about your daughter."

"Well I know what you think about her."

"Do you?"

"Sure."

"Well," said Dr. Shipp, "we must all be allowed to have an opinion. I wouldn't dream of telling _her_ what I think. As you say, she'll work it out for herself in time."

"Yes, well…" Peter copied her stiff smile. "In the meantime, Conchita's parents are here."

"Are they?" Dr. Shipp turned round. "Oh yes, so they are."

"We'll get out of your way," offered Peter, walking towards the door and gesturing for Oscar and Dana to go with him. He stopped on the way and said to Eduardo and Kylie, "You're not gonna like it. You want me to take those?"

"Thanks." Kylie handed Rose to Peter and gave Conchita a little nudge after him. "Look, Dr. Shipp, I'm really not in the mood, ok?"

"Before I proceed," Dr. Shipp said coolly, "I want you to know that my actions are guided by my client."

"What _client_?" asked Eduardo.

"Mrs. Landers."

"Aw man – her again?"

"Yes, well, she doesn't like my diagnosis of ADD and she got rather upset when I told her that I could find no evidence of stress-related illness or the like. She now insists that it was an external factor that made Stephan attack your daughter. She thought it might be the school, in which case it would be up to her to move Stephan if she didn't feel he was reaching his potential there. I think I made that quite clear to her. Or alternatively…" she tailed off with a weak smile.

"You think it's Conchita's fault?" demanded Kylie.

"W-well…" stammered Dr. Shipp. "Obviously I haven't had a chance to observe her behaviour. But… well, she's a pretty girl, and you'd be surprised how often the more attractive children are allowed to get away with things. It's what we in the psychology field call _the halo effect_," she said, slowly and deliberately.

Eduardo was vaguely aware of Eden Spengler slipping unobtrusively into the room and heading quietly for the spiral staircase, but he thought nothing of it.

"So what do you wanna do?" challenged Kylie. "There's no CCTV at the school – you can't prove she was doing anything wrong."

"Mrs. Landers won't have that. She seems to want to turn it into a full-scale investigation. What she wants…"

"Go on," Eduardo said warily.

"What she wants is for me to observe Conchita's behaviour," Dr. Shipp blurted out. "Just for a few days, so I can - "

"Absolutely not," interrupted Kylie. "She hasn't done anything wrong and I won't have her put through any kind of punishment."

"It wouldn't be a punishment," argued Dr. Shipp. "It's just that Mrs. Landers feels that Conchita is getting off lightly because she's cute and Stephan… isn't," she finished weakly.

"_He_ attacked _her_!" exclaimed Eduardo. "We have eyewitness accounts and the kid has problems anyway, which Conchita doesn't. This is just getting silly."

"Can't you tell Mrs. Landers that she's taking it too far?" Kylie asked reasonably. "The school has investigated the matter and dealt with it accordingly. He even took his punishment today, for crying out loud. The kid was kept in solitary confinement for twenty minutes, and never mind that he should have been kicked out of the school – there's nothing anybody can do about it now. What the hell has to happen for you to _leave us alone_?"

It was at this point that Jessica suddenly ran into the room, looking flustered and slightly hysterical. "Hey," she greeted the small gathering brightly. "Sorry to interrupt but – um, guys, you might wanna come downstairs and make sure the kids stay up here."

"Why?" asked Kylie.

"Well there's a little bit of a demon situation." Foremost in her mind was what Dr. Shipp might do if she thought the parents around here were endangering their children, so to help matters Jessica tried to laugh it off.

"Ah crap," muttered Kylie, heading straight for the pole and looking down to ascertain the seriousness of the situation. "Do we have any idea what it is?"

"Well," Jessica said slowly, "me and Hikaru think it might be… you know… _that_ one."

"Oh, I see," Kylie nodded grimly. "Yeah, it probably is. Coming, babe?"

"Sure," said Eduardo, making to follow her.

With Dr. Shipp pissing them off so much, Eduardo and Kylie hadn't really noticed the noise coming from downstairs. They couldn't really help but notice it when they reached the scene, though – everything seemed to be in chaos. The demon was the first thing to draw the eye: it resembled a dragon (Kylie supposed she could have expected that from an Oriental demon), it was a good fifteen feet long and had its head bowed so as to avoid the ceiling. It looked pretty flimsy, a cool blue in colour and seemed to be made of water – but the crackling electric-blue flames billowing at intervals from its mouth looked far from harmless.

It was easy to spot Hikaru, as the demon was aiming its fire straight at her. She was currently ducking behind a filing cabinet, Dana with her, both timing a strategic dash for the nearest desk. Garrett, Roland and Egon were all there, aiming proton fire at the apparently oblivious monster. It was only when he caught sight of Eduardo and Kylie that Roland shut off his proton stream and exercised his talent for stating the obvious: "This doesn't seem to be working."

"So what do we do?" Kylie asked exasperatedly. This really _was_ all she needed.

Dr. Shipp suddenly appeared at the bottom of the stairs, watching with a mixture of utmost horror and mild interest. As for Janine, she was still on the phone, totally ignoring the demon and trying to make herself heard over the noise it was making.

"I don't know!" she shouted, a hand over her free ear so that she could better hear the other side of the conversation. "Three or four thousand years, maybe? I'd ask her but she's having a little bit of trouble with a demon at the moment! …What? …_No_! For goodness' sake don't hang up – I've been trying to get hold of you all afternoon!"

Egon and then Garrett turned off their proton streams, the former watching the demon with interest and presumably trying to figure out what to do about the damn thing. The monster was momentarily distracted when it felt the slight pressure on its back subside, so Dana and Hikaru took the opportunity to dive behind Janine's desk.

"Oh for God's _sake_!" yelled Janine, when she had to duck a bout of ice-cold blue flame. "Can't you take her outside? What? No – sorry, Mr. Tsukamoto – I wasn't talking to you."

Dana wasn't sure about moving, but Janine's outburst had the desired effect on Hikaru and she hurried for the door. Garrett could see that in the moment she took to open it, she was about to be frozen or burned up or liquefied or whatever would happen if one of those flames touched her. So he picked up a stapler – coincidentally the same one that Kylie had thrown at her father that morning – and hurled it towards the demon. The object crashed through the monster's body as though it were water (which for all they knew it was). The monster straightened up and turned round, glaring intently at its audience.

Dr. Shipp finally seemed to realise she was out of her depth and let out a small squeal. The demon seemed to take this to mean something (nobody knew what, it didn't exactly look a logical creature) and aimed its fire at Dr. Shipp. Kylie was closest to the doctor, and instinct told her to pull her to one side.

"What did you do that for?" Eduardo asked dryly, as the demon turned and began to follow Hikaru.

Everyone followed the demon outside except for Janine, who ignored them completely and continued her phone conversation. "Would you really be willing to take her off our hands?" she asked eagerly. "Yes, I promise you – straight out of a pendant. We had no idea she was in there… I know – it's crazy how things work out. So can we send her over later in the week?"

Nobody knew why Dr. Shipp had followed the demon outside, least of all she herself. The thing's eyes were narrowed viciously, moving slowly between Dr. Shipp and Hikaru, and then roaming over the whole crowd: Hikaru, Dr. Shipp, Egon, Dana, Eduardo, Kylie, Roland and Garrett.

"Hey," Dana suddenly hissed to Eduardo, who happened to be closest. "My family are all upstairs, right?"

"Sure," answered Eduardo.

"What about the twins?" asked Egon, watching warily as the creature suddenly took flight and lifted itself into the air above them.

"Uh… I haven't seen them," Eduardo confessed. "No wait – I did see Eden – she was heading - "

He was cut off by – bizarrely enough – a very loud explosion. The demon suddenly screeched loudly as a large red flame and a mass of black smoke billowed towards it from the roof of the firehouse… and a moment later it disintegrated into a few small drops of water that disappeared before they even reached the ground.

There followed a stunned silence that lasted for a good thirty seconds. Then Garrett ventured quietly, "Do you think they meant to do that?"

"I'd imagine it was just a lucky coincidence," Egon replied grimly, making his way inside with a crowd of curious people on his tail.

Eduardo, Kylie and Dana veered off into the kitchen where Peter was holding onto an understandably spooked and upset Rose, and Jessica was checking Conchita over.

"Are you ok?" she was asking, crouching down with her hands on Conchita's shoulders and looking searchingly into her face.

"Yes, I'm fine," Conchita assured her.

"That's the same black eye as before, right?"

"Mhm."

"Ok, good. So like, what just happened?"

Not a single person in the building knew the precise answer to Jessica's question: not even John and Eden, who were already being thoroughly chastised by their mother by the time Egon, Roland, Garrett (helped by Roland), Hikaru and Dr. Shipp (who was just going with the crowd by this time) got to the roof.

"YOU COULD HAVE KILLED YOURSELVES!" Janine was yelling loudly. "THE FORCE OF THAT EXPLOSION COULD HAVE THROWN YOU OFF THE ROOF!"

"No it couldn't," argued Eden. "We shielded ourselves with the door and deliberately positioned the explosion so that it would blow us inside the building… if anywhere," she added, with a weak smile. "Which it didn't."

"So no harm done," John concluded smilingly. "Didn't I tell you we could make a bomb out of clothes, Edie?"

"You did," Eden replied thoughtfully, "but even _you_ didn't expect it to be our biggest explosion to date. And just what was that thing we blew up?"

John looked blank. "We blew something up?" he asked. "Besides the stuff we knew about, I mean."

Eden rolled her eyes. "Don't you notice _anything_? It looked like a dragon."

"It was a Japanese demon," Egon told them. "It was actually lucky that you created that explosion when you did – we were having a few problems disabling it. But I must admit I don't quite understand it. Just what did you make that bomb out of?"

"A couple of things," John shrugged dismissively. "But it was mostly that robe thing that Hikaru was wearing yesterday."

"Really?" Hikaru asked interestedly. "How curious. That old thing was in my family for generations. My grandmother told me it was weaved from enchanted thread by a great magician, but I never believed it."

"Maybe you should start believing in stuff like that," Garrett said dryly.

"You mean those were _magic_ clothes?" exclaimed John, his face clouding over with disappointment. "Well that doesn't count!"

"Count as what?" asked Roland.

"As making a bomb out of clothes!"

"Children this age should not be making bombs out of _anything_!" Dr. Shipp suddenly proclaimed. "Dr. and Mrs. Spengler, can't you see that your son is dangerous?"

"What about me?" Eden asked, with a wounded expression.

"I think you'd be considerably less dangerous without your brother's influence, dear," Dr. Shipp smiled patronisingly.

"Ah, hey, look – they're not always this bad," Roland hastily intervened. "They're just curious, that's all, because they're so smart. Egon and Janine normally keep a really close eye on them – it's just that today's been a bit hectic."

"The first time I came here they were trying to build a bomb with no supervision," argued Dr. Shipp.

"We're very sorry about that, Doctor," Egon deadpanned. "It was a one-off, I can assure you… apart from what happened just now."

"Which actually saved your life if you hadn't noticed," Garrett added pointedly. "Look honey, don't you think you could maybe just let this one go?"

"Well… on your head be it," Dr. Shipp relented. "But I think I'm going to have to come up with something a little less mundane than just ADHD and asperger's."

"We didn't ask you for a diagnosis, Dr. Shipp," Egon calmly pointed out, some sympathy for the woman compelling him to protect her from his wife's wrath. Well, she'd had a tough day.

"Out of interest," Janine ventured slowly, "how many children do _you_ have, Dr. Shipp?"

"Well… I don't actually _have_ any children of my own," confessed Dr. Shipp.

"Ah," Janine nodded smilingly. "Career woman, huh?"

"Exactly."

"I see." She allowed herself a smug little smile and then left it at that.

"Yes, well, I was here about the Rivera girl anyway," Dr. Shipp remembered. "If you'll excuse me…"

Once she'd gone, Janine turned on her children once again and said threateningly, "I am going to have your hands surgically pinned behind your back if you don't _stop blowing things up_!"

Roland was at the side of the roof, idly looking over the ground below for any remains of Hikaru's monster. He didn't see any – but after a few moments he _did_ see Dr. Shipp walking out of the front door, so he announced, "Dr. Shipp's leaving. Guess she's had enough of us for one day."

Then suddenly Jessica's angry voice wafted up with amazing clarity from two floors below: "_SHE THINKS_ I'M _WHAT_?"

"It sounds like Dr. Shipp had something to say about Jessica," remarked Eden. "Shall we?"

With some of the rubbish Dr. Shipp had come out with, it was very difficult for any of them to take her seriously. When the small crowd came within earshot of the kitchen, it became even more obvious that whatever the doctor's most recent diagnosis had Jessica in a state of absolute fury.

"Jess, calm down," Oscar was saying soothingly. "There's nothing wrong with it. My best friend is gay."

"I know he is!" snapped Jessica. "But _I'm_ not gay!"

"What did you have to tell her for?" Dana asked Peter irritably. "She'll go on about it for weeks."

"Well Dr. Shipp upset most of us," shrugged Peter. "It only seemed fair. Oh – hi, you guys. Did you figure out what happened?"

A moment later they were all exchanging news. John explained his bomb to Peter and Jessica with shining eyes, while Janine told Oscar and a very sorry looking Dana that Hikaru would be on her way to Tokyo in forty-eight hours and if they could get Peter to write her a cheque for expenses that'd be great thanks.

"So what about Conchita?" Roland asked Eduardo and Kylie. "I'm sure Joey will be happy to give his testimony again if you need it."

"Thanks," Kylie smiled weakly. "Apparently Dr. Shipp and Mrs. Landers need to take their proposal through some sort of higher authority first. If it's approved Chita will be monitored at school for a few days. We're just gonna have to wait and see what happens."

x x x

For Eduardo and Kylie, the party full of three and four year olds was every bit as taxing as they had thought it would be, especially after such a harrowing week. They were grateful when Saturday came around. So many birthday cards came in the mail that they couldn't figure out who they were all from – they didn't even think they _knew_ that many people. They all looked forward to a nice quiet gathering at the firehouse, but the number of phone calls to Conchita from well-wishers delayed their departure by almost an hour.

"Hey," Eduardo hissed to Kylie, as he emerged from the bathroom and heard Conchita happily reeling off the list of small token presents given to her the day before. "Is she talking to Steve?"

"Yes," answered Kylie.

"Are you still pissed at him for fraternising with the enemy?"

"I don't know."

"Are you gonna talk to him?"

"If he asks for me I will, but I don't feel like it."

Steve didn't ask for her. He'd been working a lot of weekends lately in spite of his precarious stress levels, and this was one such weekend, so the conversation didn't last long. It was only moments after Conchita hung up that the phone started ringing again. She picked it up and said happily, "Hello?"

"Hey Chita, it's your favourite cousin," a cheery voice replied.

"Once removed," Conchita smiled wryly. "Hi Matt. When are you coming to see us?"

"Ooh!" Kylie suddenly exclaimed, on hearing her cousin's name, and she waved frantically at Conchita.

"It'll be right after school breaks," Matt replied. "I'm gonna bring you _such_ a great present. Only trouble is I don't know what you want."

"Surprise me."

"Do what? You're four. Four year olds hate surprises."

"_I_ don't."

"Ah well, I'll think of something. In the meantime you should have gotten a card from me."

"We haven't looked at them all yet."

"Popular girl, aren't you," Matt smiled fondly.

"Mommy's waving at me and making stupid faces," Conchita told him. "I think she wants to talk to you."

"Great," Matt approved. "I kinda wanna talk to her too."

Conchita handed the phone to her mother. Kylie put it to her ear and said, "Hi Matt."

"So thanks for ratting me out to Steve," Matt said, not unkindly. "He told Mom and she's been _begging_ me not to go and see Jeremy."

"_Nobody_ thinks you should go and see Jeremy," retorted Kylie. "He'll probably beat you up."

"Is it gonna bother him that I'm short?"

"Why should it bother him that you're short?"

"Well it bothers my dad, and Mom reckons they were best buddies."

"Yeah, well… I don't know," was the best answer Kylie could give.

"It's not fair, is it – specially since Chita's nice and tall like Eddie," remarked Matt. "So how's Rosie doing? Is she _definitely_ gonna be a short-ass like us?"

"Looks like it," Kylie confirmed. "It's weird. She used to be a really fat baby and now she's short and skinny. But anyway, when are you going to see Jeremy?"

"A week today."

"Yikes."

"Aw, c'mon – what's the worst that could happen? So he beats me up – I'll just chalk it down to experience. Oh, hey, speaking of beating people up – how's Chita's black eye?"

"Still lingering, but you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know it was there."

"Well that's good news."

"Call and let me know how it goes, ok?"

"I will. Have a good day."

x x x

Conchita was typically dressed (for her) in pink combat trousers and a white tank top. When she arrived at the firehouse the first person to greet her was John, with the question, "What are your pants made of?"

"Jonathan!" scolded Eden. Then she hugged Conchita and said, "Happy birthday. Everyone's here."

"Who's everyone?" Kylie asked warily.

"Don't worry, we're staggering the crowd," Eden smiled reassuringly. "There'll be more people along when some of this lot have gone."

A lot of people wanted to stop by and wish Conchita a happy birthday – but for the moment it was just the four Venkmans, the Spengler crowd, Roland, Garrett and his fiancée Jo Kendall, Winston Zeddemore and his daughter Charlene and Ray Stantz with his young son Eric. At one point Charlene took Eric to one side and asked if he too was getting a bad vibe from Rose Rivera. He confessed that he was, and Charlene confided that she felt quite sure it was because they had both missed Rose's own birthday celebration back in February.

Soon enough the room was awash with cake crumbs and discarded wrapping paper, Slimer happily picking his way through both of these things. Conchita had certainly got a good haul this year, perhaps partly through sympathy for the recent black eye. Even Joey Jackson had been surprising again and sent the gift of a cute three-inch teddy bear via Roland.

"Jess and I got you a little something extra," Oscar told Conchita, when she really did think she'd got through that bout of gift unwrapping. "It's kind of a reward for putting up with Dr. Shipp breathing down your neck all week."

"And it's also to say good on you for not snapping and proving once and for all that she really doesn't know sh… um… anything," added Jessica.

Kylie made a token objection: "Oh guys, you didn't have to…"

"Kylie, honestly, it is the cheapest piece of tat _ever_," Oscar assured her, as he handed the small gift over. "But we think it's cute."

Conchita thought it was cute too. It was one of those incredibly pliant squidgy things you squeeze in your hand to relieve stress, and no matter how harshly you treat the thing it always springs back into shape. And this one was special: it looked like a pig.

"Joey told me the kid that hit you kinda looks like a pig," explained Jessica. "We thought maybe you could pretend it's him – or anyone else who disses you."

"Thank you." Conchita hugged both Oscar and Jessica, as was her custom when she received a gift.

"So is anything else happening with Stephan Landers?" Roland asked Kylie, when he had her on one side. "Joey wants to know."

Kylie shook her head. "Conchita's shown that she really is as sweet and good as everyone thinks. There's nothing they can do – especially with Joey's testimony. Can you thank him for us?"

"Yeah, you bet."

"I just hope Chita doesn't have another run-in with that kid. It's been hellish."

It had been quite a week. Even with Hikaru, her demon, Steve and his betrayal gone there had still been Dr. Shipp hanging around, not to mention the worry of how the Jill and Jeremy situations would develop. But Kylie couldn't worry about that now. She was right in the middle of her older daughter's fourth birthday party. Four. God!

"Where does the time go?" she asked Eduardo. "They're growing up so fast."

"Yeah." He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her head. "I know."

THE END


End file.
